When Daniel Beegan, a congestive heart failure patient, was discharged from Franciscan St. Francis Health in late January, he was sent home with a telehealth monitor that tracks his well-being.

Written by

Maureen Groppe
Gannett

After Franciscan St. Francis Health of Indianapolis started telemonitoring patients who had been treated and discharged for heart failure, the hospital's readmission rate for those patients dropped by more than 70 percent.

Sensors in a patient's home can check blood pressure, heart rates or other conditions and send the information to a central monitoring station.

"Without that capability, you're really just relying on patients to call into the office if anything changes," said Dr. Christopher Doehring, vice president of medical affairs. "(Now) you can see when patients are ...